If you are DMing, remember...1. To strongly consider giving out at least one free "tax feat," like Expertise and pre-errata Melee Training.2. To use Monster Manual 3/Monster Vault/Monster Vault: Nentir Vale/Dark Sun Creature Catalog math. Avoid or manually update anything with Monster Manual 1 or 2 math.3. That skill challenges have always been scene-framing devices for the GM, that players should never be overtly told that they are in a skill challenge, and that the Rules Compendium has the most up-to-date skill DCs and skill challenge rules.

If you would like assistance with character optimization, remember to tell us what the what the rest of the players are playing, what books are allowed, your starting level, the highest level you expect to reach, what free feats you receive, if anything is banned, whether or not themes are allowed, your starting equipment, and how much you dislike item-dependent builds.If you wish to talk about settings, 4e's settings are Points of Light (the planes and the natural world's past empires are heavily detailed in various sourcebooks and magazines), 4e Forgotten Realms, 4e Eberron, 4e Dark Sun, and whatever setting you would like to bring into 4e.

But anon, Barbarians are an especially strong case for the superiority of Cunning Stalker to Streak of Light! You need CA for Storm of Blades more than you do Howling Strike, and Streak of Light is worthless for that.

For contrast to the chargers, an actually effective (and hilarious) Pixie is the Sorcerer/Bard/Voice of Thunder, which loops Rolling Echo (which so long as you hit at least one target, repeats at the start of every one of your turns) to scream the enemy to death.

Get the HEY! LISTEN! jokes out of the way first session though, they wear thin fast.

And now I feel faintly bad that my first ever 4e character ended up doing Radiant+Cold on all their attacks. They were a Warlord who multiclassed Paladin and was a devout worshipper of Bahamut. I went the Honourable Blade paragon path, which lets you make all your weapon attacks do the damage type of your Dragon Breath, and took the Radiant Breath feat, which adds Radiant on top of (as opposed to the 'instead of' you usually get from alternate damage types) any damage type done by your Dragon Breath. I just took it because I thought it made fluff sense.

Wishful-thinking faggotry. There is nothing extra special about Radiant Breath that would make it change an unrelated rule, it's exactly the same as e.g. Breath Admixture but with a fixed damage type, and the path feature acknowledges multityped breaths exist and says you still have to pick one type.

I still don't think it's as clear cut, since you can have multiple damage types via Adaptable Breath without having multiple damage types in one via Admixture Breath. It could be argued (Cold+Radiant) is a single damage type, since it's dealt all together, as opposed to just having Adaptabler Breath and the choice, say, of Cold or Fire.

>Have you started up your own 4e game yet?Yeah, I was DMing the very first one that came out of /4eg/'s rebirth. It's going well, but we've a few issues as of right now. I've been meaning to join a game as a player. I've a few character ideas I want to explore, both mechanically and in RP.

There's no argument to be had here, it's totally clear-cut. Feat says your breath does two types of damage. Path says you pick one type of damage your breath deals. You pick one of the two types, that's it.

And no, two damage types are not a new "single damage type", you pulled that completely out of your ass. Fuck off munchkin.

Because, as mentioned and despite what the other guy says, I think there's a validity to my argument. Although I guess it's a question of how order of operations works.

With Dragon Breath, you can usually select one damage type to deal with the attack, more if you have Adaptable Breath. If you have Admixture Breath, you can instead select two damage types, and with Radiant Breath the damage is always Radiant in addition to other types.

With Honourable Blade's feature, you select one damage type you can deal with your Dragon Breath. Admixture Breath is more fiddly here, it's arguable whether or not it would also let you select two, but Radiant Breath is an automatic effect- I literally cannot choose to just deal pure Cold damage with my Dragon Breath. The feat permanently changes it so that it is always Cold+Radiant.

As I said, originally I thought I didn't work, so I double checked it with my GM and he said it was fine. I thought it was a houserule until THF chimed in during a thread a while ago to say he thought it made sense RAW.

I'm normally rolling my eyes at the "Reeeeeeeee anime on my /tg/" guys, and love my animu sluts, but I honestly don't think they send the right message.Or if you have to do it, at least put disgaea or other anime SRPG pics instead of stuff that is completely unrelated to 4e

So I have a question: why is 4e the only D&D edition to not receive a retroclone?Basic has been reimagined into so many different games it's not even funny.1e and 2e have had many spin-offs as well.3.5 has become Pathfinder for the most part.Even 5e has got books for playing in Lord of the Rings and similar shit. And Paizo is working on a "second edition" of Pathfinder that is similar to 5e.Whereas 4e has.... what? Strike? 13th Age? Neither contain very many 4e mechanics. Let's face it: 4e was so bad that no one wanted to pick up the reins and keep riding the horse. It had a few good ideas, like a level-inherent bonus to AC, and.....and....well, AEDU worked kind of alright for wizards.... and.... that's about it. Maybe because people just don't like a horridly contrived "you can do a cool cinematic fighter thing once per day" ability that is not cinematic in the least, nor cool, it's just a damage boost to make people think the game has resource management mechanics. And it does, but in the most contrived way possible, after all other forms of scarcity are eliminated from the game. I played 4e for 2 years and the best I can say for the game is that it is relatively DM friendly. Then 5e came out and it was just objectively better. Simpler, faster character creation, and the healing surges were much better as hit dice. Ironically, the game's worst mechanics are the fighter mechanics, which are still based off of 4e's rules. Anyway, there is nothing you can do with 4e that you can't do with 5e, and since this bloated mess has been pretty much dropped (maybe because it took 3 monster manuals to fix the game's math) I don't really see any reason to play 4e anymore. Any advice on how to sell the books? My friends have quite a collection.

I'm currently working on one, but I think it's just that actually making content for it is a huge amount of work. In other versions of the game you can straight up use core content, or it's simple enough you can remake it, but in 4e there's not a good OGL equivalent, which means you need to redesign every class from the bottom up, including a large number of balanced power selections for every single class, whereas in other editions you can cut corners by sharing spell lists.

Oh wait, reading the rest of the post you're just an idiot troll. My bad.

>>58473759Here's a (You), but the main reason has to do with the fact that to make a basic 4e class there's far too many things to consider when making one. This leads to an issue when trying to simplify the game to a core level.

>>58473849It's not the things to consider, necessarily. It's that they're very simple and because no OGL means you have to try very hard not to just straight copy-paste all the existing ones, and there's only so much innovation room.

I mean, there's an absolutely huge amount of design space and innovation room, but actually exploring it while maintaining balance and a consistent level of quality is just a lot of hard work. You can't afford to half arse anything, unlike most retroclones.

>>58473730>Bullethell is 4e like.Not really. I mean maybe you could maybe make some equivalence with spellcard wankery or something to make it fit, but a bullet hell shooter isn't really similar to a grid based tactics game at all.And again artwork that looks like it belongs in a game or rulebook artwork (like pick related) would be better fitting than any tangentially related waifu pic and would be more in line with what the game is about

I think that works well. Just make sure to apply permanent GP costs to anything with a permanent effect. But I think in general temporary resources for temporary effects, permanent resources for permanent effects makes sense.

>>58473902Are we talking about player or monsters powers? Because I feel like if you tried to make a game without copying any official content you would be totally fucked. The Dice+Stat attack vs X is pretty damn played out.

And I find it hard to say dice+stat attack vs x is played out when it's such a basic framework you can use it to do almost anything. It's a foundational unit of every edition of D&D, and they're still finding different ways to apply it, 4e just explored it more, and it still only scratched the surface.

Then again, there's also a hell of a lot of design space for utilities and non-combat powers that went unexplored, which a retroclone would need to put work into as well.

>>58473805>Oh wait, reading the rest of the post you're just an idiot troll.How is that? The D&D designers seemed to pretty clearly reject AEDU. It's a mess of bookkeeping that adds nothing to the game, and strains believability because how the fuck does your fighter know that he can't use Brutal Strike until he rests for a few hours?

A hundred replies of actual on topic discussion is better than three hundred posts of bullshit.

While I'm here, I might as well ask the thread overall- Perception and Initiative.

I'm working on a 4e rewrite and these are the two systems we're currently looking at and fiddling around with. Perception is a problem because it often ends up the most used skill, and it becomes almost necessary to have someone with a good score in it. We're considering changing up how it works, instead of having a standard skill for it, everyone gets a specific kind of Perception, themed around their class. Rangers being good at seeing it in nature, looking for animal tracks, etc. Trouble is finding a good one for each class, and possibly race, while incorporating things like darkvision on top of that.

For Initiative, meanwhile, we're removing it as an innate property of Dex since currently all our stats have a balanced set of defensive secondary stats they contribute to, and one stat getting extra innate stuff would be unbalancing. We're pondering having Initiative defined by class, possibly influenced by role, but are also considering an extra sort of thing to introduce some more variety- Initiative Actions. Initiative Actions are declared before the first turn of combat, while rolling initiative, and give you a bonus or penalty to your init in return for obliging you to take a specific action on your first turn of the combat. Declaring that you'll recklessly charge headlong into the enemy, for example, might be an action that gives you an initiative bonus, since you decided to do so before taking a moment to confirm whether or not it was a good idea, letting you act faster. It'll be tricky to balance and set up an interesting set of both general and class specific options, but we think it could add some interesting depth to the initiative system and make the first turn of a fight more variable.

>>58474265The last couple of threads went pretty well ignoring shitposters, and we can all guess why we're going to have a couple of sad fucks trying to renew their efforts at shitposting. Ignore and report guys, ignore and report.

>>58474401Build Perception into the game with passive perception, do not make it a skill. Add a way for a character to take "oblivious" or some other thing if he wants to not be good at noticing things.

Well, that's our whole point, we're not making it a skill. However, everyone just having the same generic bonus seems dull. Giving each class/race their own perception specialty seemed like a way of keeping up variety while also making it a more universal thing.

>>58474401Perception is a weird thing, in the sense that it's the filter for giving players the information they need to explore the world. Passive perception is an improvement, but it's still a noticeable hurdle - and in the end, when you have one character with high perception, that controls the flow of information to the whole party.An idea could be to take a page from the GUMSHOE system, where you have certain skills that give information to the party automatically. You could do something like that for things like perception, secret doors, tracking and so on. It becomes a mechanic of filter between the GM and the whole group.

That's actually something I'm pushing for, although I'm more indie inclined than most of my dev team. I like the idea of the default use of Perception being automatic, 'You get the information', but others are still in favour of perception rolls as a common thing, arguing that reactive perception to stop an ambush, or using perception in a skill challenge as part of problem solving, are important.

...I'm really not convinced perception needs fixed? Having "radar" as a skill coverage role doesn't bother me, especially since the way 4e allots stats you've got "Gimli, what do your dwarf eyes see?"

You are correct that Initiative could be better. I've experimented with making it a trainable skill that doesn't get half-level or a stat modifier and was pleased with the results, as it allowed converting monsters to fixed initiatives by role without needing to add a level adjustment term.

>>58474581Just spitballing here, but - you could split up things and have a sort of "notice hidden" skill used specifically against hiding (even though typing this made me think of using stealth as an attack agains widom or something), and have a more general passive perception to use for the kind of thing we were talking earlier.I don't really see the point of keeping it in an halfay useful state though. I don't thing the game would benefit from rolls made for the sake of rolling something to progress.

pathfinder only exists because of a generous application of copyright. WotC stopped doing this with 4e, which is why you can't legally make make a 4e "pathfinder."

In hindsight, the OGL was one of the worst business decisions WotC ever made, and in some ways 4e was a burner product to get rid of it. The OGL essentially meant that WotC would have to compete with itself every time it released a new product. If it weren't for the OGL, we wouldn't have had pathfinder astroturfing and the entire industry would have been better off for it.

I dislike the idea of putting such mechanically important things in skill slots, because it somewhat obliges people to take them, rather than more flavourful options. I'd prefer skill choice to be entirely based on representing the character rather than filling in mechanical necessities.

>>58474401Initiative is one of the few things I generally houserule out of games (not oly 4e), because I find tracking turns incredibly tedious, I do initiative checks against fixed DCs (10+monster's init) for having a round before going into side initiative, but that's my extreme position.A system I like on paper is that from Shadow of the Demon Lord. You can either take a fast turn or a slow turn. Fast turn means one action, but you go first. Slow turn means you get the full round, but act later. That doesn't solve the sorting of combatants in each phase, but then again you can easily do fixed initiative based on modifier alone.

>>58474806In hindsight it was a bad decision for them, yeah, but the immediate effect was a huge sales spike.

Also, the industry and third party companies were made hundreds of times better by having it, so >industry would have been better off for itIs just being a contrarian so that you can be "cool" and hate on popular things to fit in on 4chan, pathetic.

But skills have always been based on mechanical necessities. So have classes. I don't get the mindset where "one of you is expected to be a leader class" is fine but "one of you is expected to train Perception" is not.

Some good things came out of the OGL, and the companies making said good things managed to stay afloat and keep making good things. I'm partial to Green Ronin to say one.

There were also a few years were the market was nothing but shitty ripoffs and forced adaptations. People nowadays have forgotten stuff like Monte Cook World of Darkess d20 or Abortion Clinic Bombing: the Game, but those were a thing.

>>58474846>I dislike the idea of putting such mechanically important things in skill slots, because it somewhat obliges people to take them, rather than more flavourful options.I really question the notion that 4e needs 20 different people to be writing retroclones that have bad ideas about game design in general. This seems like an issue of too many home cooks and not enough trained chefs.

No visible progress was made on the 4e simulator other than optimization and cleaning up the code. I had a migraine that was bad enough to make me delirious. That said, the way tiles and objects are loaded is improved so that I could potentially in the future generate arbitrarily large campaigns "minecraft" style. Right now the world is still bounded.

>>58474939I sincerely believe the OGL was bad for RPGs in the long run.

The OGL only helped companies publish d20 content. When d20 died, that content went along with it. It's because of the OGL that RPG content is split between d20, d20-5e, and d20-paizo. It's because of the OGL that the way wotc did d20 in the 90s is considered the one true way.

d20 certainly helped get some content published, but it wasn't a sustainable growth. It's hard to know what would have happened without OGL, but it's possible that it cannibalized a market that was already growing incidentally.

If you're going to call it bad, you should explain why you think it's bad.

Our logic is that skills should be flavourful things that say something about the character while also providing a form of mechanical benefit, but that those mechanical benefits should be roughly equivalent.

Something we are going out of our way to avoid with our design is forcing someone to choose between something flavourful and something useful. We're also segregating feats into Combat and Non-combat, as well as splitting Utilities into Support (combat utility) and Utility (Non-combat utility). The point being making sure that properly representing the character you want to play never comes at a cost to their combat capabilities.

>>58475051When I was outlining the 4e simulator, I went through every skill and listed how I would be able to simulate each of them. Some skills are harder than others because they don't have as many concrete uses. Dungeoneering and nature needed some added utility to compensate.

I ended up giving those skills the ability to be used for navigation within specific environments. Incidentally, this gave characters more tools for avoiding traps and ambushes and finding loot than just perception without detracting from what perception could do.

I'm still having trouble structuring how social skills are used, but I know I'll come up with something.

>>58475178>If you're going to call it bad, you should explain why you think it's bad.I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be condescending.

Look at the 4e skill list. There are a lot of skills that have mechanical utility. acrobatics, athletics, stealth, heal, and perception all are obviously useful. If your environments have any traps or obstacles, then at least arcana, religion, and thievery are going to be useful. Add in social skills where relevant, and there is a shitload of mechanical representation for a character's skillset. What few skills aren't covered by that already can be added to some challenges just to keep them relevant.

>I dislike the idea of putting such mechanically important things in skill slots, because it somewhat obliges people to take them, rather than more flavourful options. I'd prefer skill choice to be entirely based on representing the character rather than filling in mechanical necessities.

What you are basically doing with this is gutting everything the 4e skill list already does well, and that is provide different mechanical rewards for your skill choices. It's ok for characters to have strengths and weaknesses. Making skill lists almost purely flavor-based would just make the system a parody of itself where every character is mechanically the same out of combat and you are forced to "fluff" everything.

>>58474389I'm sure I would be. But since you can't point to an actual example of it happening, I'm going to have to reserve my surprise for the time being.

>>58474806>implying that any of the OGL products besides Pathfinder ever gave Wizards of the Coast any significant competition>implying that Pathfucks would have bought 4e anyway.Have you ever met pathfucks? They were sticking to 3.5 beforehand anyway. At best you can argue new players who choose Pathfinder over D&D and that's just a branding failure on D&D's part, lol.

>>58474980>But skills have always been based on mechanical necessities.Wrong.

>>58475051>Well but Perception IS kind of a corner case, because without that PCs cannot interact (fully) with the world.Wrong.

>>58475150>d20>90sI love how underage kiddos out themselves in these posts. >I sincerely believe the OGL was bad for RPGs in the long run. Of course you'd think that if you hated d20 system. In reality, it's smaller publishers' fault for being so asshurt about their product that they can't release an OGL of their own.

...So you don't understand what I'm saying at all and are just making a lot of stupid assumptions?

It's fine that different 4e skills have different mechanical uses. We're all for that, and we're retaining it and expanding on it to make every skill a meaningful choice both in flavour terms and in mechanical options.

What I'm against is placing something purely mechanical in the skill list, like Initiative, or having other skills alongside Perception, which is almost universally more valuable and something everybody wants at times. Having it be its own separate thing, rather than being a mandatory choice for some classes, is good for increasing player options and letting more than one person in the group actually gain information about their environment.

>>58475150As a note, I didn't reply to you because you said your beliefs were sincere and I didn't want to shit all over that, so a different asshole anon told you off for you not knowing much about the OGL.

>>58475460I didn't make assumptions. I purely criticized what you have typed here. To reiterate:

>It's fine that different 4e skills have different mechanical uses. We're all for that, and we're retaining it and expanding on it to make every skill a meaningful choice both in flavour terms and in mechanical options.That makes more sense. It contradicts the language used here.

>I dislike the idea of putting such mechanically important things in skill slots, because it somewhat obliges people to take them, rather than more flavourful options. I'd prefer skill choice to be entirely based on representing the character rather than filling in mechanical necessities....because depending on the campaign, skills like diplomacy can be mechanical necessities. Furthermore, players get so many skills that it's more than likely that the party will be able to adequately cover every skill. This seems like a solution in search of a problem.

IMO, a much better idea than nerfing perception by splitting it and bloating the skill list would be to give the players more tools. I honestly agree with the concept that perception has a monopoly on too many things. For example, you could have nature/dungeoneering/streetwise have an "environment awareness" check to identify traps and ambushes. Boom, you have broken up the perception monopoly, added more flavor to the game, and didn't bloat the skill list with 2-4 reskinned "perception" skills, which was a mistake that wotc already attempted with 3e and reverted in 3.5

Contextual flavour necessities are very different from mechanical, system required necessities. Needing a social skill in a social campaign is the former, Initiative occupying a skill slot is the latter. The former is impossible to do anything about without crippling the system, all we can do is provide advice to GM's about what skills will be over or undervalued in certain kind of games and encouraging them to keep that in mind so as to not screw over certain PC's.

Did you even read my initial post? This was never about bloating the skill list. This was about removing Perception from the skill list entirely and making it its own discrete thing.

>>58475845I read your whole post, but I also take goals and mission statements seriously. Whenever you're working on a large project, your goals are important, and an RPG is a large project.

>I dislike the idea of putting such mechanically important things in skill slots, because it somewhat obliges people to take them, rather than more flavourful options. I'd prefer skill choice to be entirely based on representing the character rather than filling in mechanical necessities.

This indicates that the goal is reducing the mechanical impact of skills. If this is NOT the case, then what is the goal? I already have a decent idea of your intentions, but the initial concept was foggy.

I have and it's going great. I put together a group with 2 of my old players and 2 recovering 3aboos. I warned them that I was going to prep only the bare minimum but I'm having so much fun and the players are responding well so it's growing as we go. I ran them through Twisting Halls as a tutorial, then Reavers which has been better than I expected (but I scrapped the whole elf part, which I found unsatisfactory, and built it around the map of an elf city I got from some Pathfinder AP). We have still one session to end it and level up.After that, I'm planning to do Thunderspire, but I've been reworking the whole module encounterwise and changed a few of the dungeons too. I'm building up to dovetail it into Gardmore Abbey and very probably end the game there.As it happens, the modules serve me as a starting point, cause I don't have that much time time to prep, but the best things have come from the emerging gameplay. So far we have a bunch of weird NPC wizards, a recurring changeling foe, some curious magical knick-knacks, a paladin who is shaping up to be Sailor Moon, and of course a mysterious card that's doing its own thing until Gardmore.Good times, good times.

...How do you get that the idea is reducing the mechanical impact of skills? I cannot understand that.

It's just about not putting purely mechanical things in those slots to compete with more flavourful options. All skills are mechanics plus flavour. Initiative would be pure mechanics and become a necessary pick at any level of real optimisation, limiting player choice.

>>58475490Not having a Perception skill does not affect the characters' ability to interact with the world in any way. It just means they can't spam skill checks at everything, and instead have to interact with the DM and the game world.

We did actually consider that, but the trouble is that you'd likely find a few easily justifiable skills becoming the defaults and getting the lion's share of the use, and that by which skill they declared the GM would be likely to give away the nature of the thing they were looking for anyway.

>>58476103>Not having a Perception skill does not affect the characters' ability to interact with the world in any way. It just means they can't spam skill checks at everything, and instead have to interact with the DM and the game world.

That was kinda my point? I mean, let's look at this from a modern design standpoint where character skills matter (as opposed to just player skill). If you have a Perception skill, you have to roll it to see things, and since the DM tells you what you see, you have to roll to interact with the DM. OR, you have an arbitrary number (passive perception) that tells the DM how much he can tell you, but once one character in the group passes it, in most cases he does so for the whole group. The logical conclusion of this is that you are facing the same issue of investigation checks in call of cthulhu, and you can consider solving it in a way similar to what GUMSHOE does in Trail.This ofc is assuming that youre arguing in good faith and not just trying to stir shit with some OSR Primer stuff that has no place here.

>>58476138>...But skill checks are how the interact with the GM and the game world.You are actually this brainwashed. I'm sorry. And to think you people actually mentioned the Old School Primer further up in this thread.

>>58476148Interesting, because I did play the game for 2 years and if you didn't do the standard 4-fights-per-day bullshit slog of a structure, the characters wiped the floor with everything, and if you did do the standard dungeon crawl then you would save your dailies for when you needed them and either blow your load early and rest, or hoard them until the last encounter before you were going to rest anyway. Rarely does another strategy make sense.

>>58476244>muh anecdotal evidenceDoesn't change the fact that it's the best strategy. Purposely gimping yourself to avoid a major flaw in the game, baked into the core rules even (not like this is some splatbook cheese) does not mean that flaw does not exist. Deal with it.

>>58473700>at least put disgaea or other anime SRPG pics instead of stuff that is completely unrelated to 4eYou know, there's only really one anime SRPG I can think of that has a kitsune character, and it's apparently mediocre.

>>58476231>let's look at this from a modern design standpointSo it's already dogshit.>If you have a Perception skill, you have to roll it to see thingsOh except you failed so you didn't see the obvious monster standing in the middle of the room. Oh you mean the DM wouldn't call for a roll for something so obvious? Oh wait, it's the DM's judgement that effects this and not just the rules themselves? Wow! It's almost as if going by common sense produces much fewer of these stupid "lol nat1 on listen check I guess I didn't hear anything or maybe I had an auditory hallucination hahahaha" bollocks shit that infests 3e+ gaming. And since different DMs have different opinions on what should constitute the need for a Perception check, it means it's just as much DM fiat as anything else, just with a skill roll involved and maybe some guidelines in the rules that themselves have an average person failing to hear people talking loudly in the next room 50% of the time.

>This ofc is assuming that youre arguing in good faith and not just trying to stir shit with some OSR Primer stuff that has no place here.It doesn't matter for shit whether I am arguing in good faith or not. My motivations are irrelevant and stop throwing around ad hominem to pretend that they are. Stop thinking that just because someone doesn't like the narrow, shitty post-3e mindset on how RPGs should work, that they are "baiting."

>>58476482>But skill checks exist to codify and govern important aspects of those interactions.Okay. Why do you need to do that?> If you reject that premise, why are you even in this thread?Why is it up to you who gets to post in your thread? Is this thread only for brainwashed 3aboos who think they and their character are completely separate entities and thus "muh character would X" is a concept worth preserving? Wait, isn't that impossible duality the exact fucking argument you people use to justify daily powers?

A good party can survive about 8 combat encounters after paragon paths kick in, and the limiting factor is surges not dailies. I'm sure some player somewhere exists who casts a daily wizard spell every round and then bitches that they should sleep after they run out in combat 2 but the far more common player is the one who uses no dailies at all until they reach the boss fight then spams them.

>>58476524>The Primer might have its merits for a certain playstyleIt does have merits for actually encouraging interaction with the world. A perception check is not interaction. It's dice rolling. That is boring bullshit. I understand I am probably wasting time trying to explain anything to brainwashed ex-3aboos who can't understand anything that isn't a skill check, but there is a difference between interacting with a d20 and interacting with the game world. Skill checks are so overused and the rules for them are so horridly done in 99% of RPGs that trying to pretend they have any more validity than the OSR style of handling such things, is stupid.

>>58476637>the far more common player is the one who uses no dailies at all until they reach the boss fight then spams them.So if you only have one fight per day and it's not a boss fight then the players will just walk all over it. Great balancing. So what you're saying is that 4e doesn't work for anything but the most narrow "go on a dungeon crawl fight X encounters then the big bad boss" and anyone who uses it for anything else is a fool? Even 3.5 could handle more types of gameplay than this. Maybe that's what you get when you take the caster per-day thing ripped off from a 1970s fantasy novel, and structure your entire game around it to solidify the fight-fight-fight-rest structure so that the game starts to sputter and whine when you use it for anything else?

>>58476704You're not playing the game wrong, the game itself IS wrong. The AEDU structure is stupid. It doesn't make anything "cinematic", and if anything the shit improvised action rules discourage players from trying something cinematic.

>>58476760I'm talking about D&D not Pathfinder you imbecile. Are you aware of any games besides 3.PF and 5e?

>>58476768No, it's not Perception, because they are used in a very specific instance: determining surprise, which automatically has consequences whether passed or failed. Among other things. So no, it's not Perception, and only an imbecile with no concept of distinction would think that it is.

Perception doesn’t need to be its own skill. Just break its uses out into the more specific and flavorful skills. Finding secret doors and traps is dungeoneeing. Noticing an ambush in natural terrain is nature. Stealth is rolled against Insight.

Guys, I think it's that dude from a few threads.>>58359314>>58359383>>58359175I don't think we're going to get anywhere by engaging with him so it might be better just to ignore him and start another conversation.

>>58476883You're actually a fucking moron. The DM calls for surprise checks when there is actually contention as to whether the party will notice an ambush. It's a part of initiating combat. Whereas if a player out-of-combat looks in a certain direction, they are going to see what is there. Requiring a perception check to see some faggotry that you spent time preparing for them anyway, is stupid, especially when the average person is going to likely find that sort of thing. But since they actually added an entire Perception skill, they have to justify it's existence by calling for a Perception check every 5 goddamn seconds (this is hyperbole, since i know you're too dumb to recognize it). Instead of just having a situational rule for one of the few times it is actually useful.

I'd ask you to explain to me what the point is of D&D having so many combat rules, to try to slow-walk you to the point I'm trying to make, but you'd just start posting dumb strawman shit so I'll explain it right out. The point of D&D having heavy combat rules, is contention. The victor of the combat, and the consequences for the victor, are contentious. Therefore it needs a detailed mechanical system to handle it. So does surprise. Rolling to find a coin on a table you are specifically looking at? Or arrow holes in a wall you said you were specifically looking at? That doesn't need a check, and requiring a perception check so you can read off trap description #4332 robs any point of that trap even existing in any form but being a trap. It turns the structure of the game world into meaningless fluff and let's players do dumb shit like jump 40 feet from standstill because the number said so.

Would you like to counter any of my points, or just respond with more witty greentext one-liners that prove you have no interest in a rational discussion, all while ironically accusing me of being the troll?

But there's nothing rational about his post. It's a combination of asserting a playstyle preference and repeating strawmen to try and act as though expressing his opinion is somehow an objective statement about how games should be designed and played. It's just stupid.

>58477014Dipping into this thread just for this:Anon, you aren't really contributing to the whole "4e thread" thing by bitching about mechanic decisions, and I'd give weight to a previous anon from past threads who said that people trying to make retroclones should be presenting them, not trying to justify why they made changes to the base game.Get some tea and chill out.

>>58476952I couldn't give less of a fuck about Pathfinder 2e. Pathfinder is an abomination of a game spawned from another abomination of a game.

>>58477051So do you have any counter to my points? I fail to see how I "went for" anything. I didn't change my argument. I said Perception checks are fucking retarded and I meant it. I explain how surprise checks were not the same thing, you laughed at me, I justified it, and now the egg is on your face cause you just realized you're wrong. So you post another off-topic shit one-liner zinger, and call me a troll again because you can't justify Perception checks as a mechanic. That's not my fault, that's the fault of the game you play.

So I'm the new guy from the last few threads. I see you're going through a bit of shitposting atm but whenever you get around to it, I have a question for you guys.

So at this point I've skimmed through the PHB and the DMG, plus I downloaded MM3 and Monster Vault, and I have access to that nifty archive site so now I basically have access to all the 4e books I'd ever need.

Now all I need to know is, where exactly do I start? I see there's a few adventure paths and I've seen some of them referenced throughout the previous general, but I'm still not quite sure where to start if I were to set up a game.

Like, are there houserules for low level parties like how 5e games generally start players at Level 3 or is it possible to run a party from Level 1-30 without a whole lot of complications along the way?

>>58477014>Would you like to counter any of my points, or just respond with more witty greentext one-liners that prove you have no interest in a rational discussion, all while ironically accusing me of being the troll?

Since you're making a whole swath on assumptions based on nothing, and drawing imaginary lines that boil down to your taste, I'm going to go with greentext.

>>58477092>It's a combination of asserting a playstyle preferenceSo you deny that spamming Perception checks for the sake of "muh character skill" doesn't rob one of the oh-so-precious pillars of the game: EXPLORATION? OSR games had calls for "perception" checks in specific instances where they were warranted. Outside of that, common sense ruled, because common sense is half the reason you have a goddamn DM and not some Neverwinter Nights MUD. But you people decided to throw that out in favor of failing to see blindingly obvious shit just because your character has a slightly-below-average Wisdom that isn't even outside of one SD below the mean, because it means things are more "realistic" because it's based on your character skill instead.

Please explain to me how any of that makes any sense? Playing Senzarr or FATAL or some other abomination RPG is also a "playstyle preference" but it doesn't mean that those games aren't fucking shit.

>>58477112I personally use modules for their maps and locations, depending on where the party is.For example, I'm using Hammerfast as a hub city and a core plot piece, but radically redoing everything in it.I've also introduced some houserules, such as magic item markets being virtually nonexistent, inherent bonuses, a stronger presence of Powers within the setting similar to Greek gods (the party already ran into an old man with seven canaries and one pc is inadvertently stuck in a bet between Kord and Gruumsh), a generally higher power curve with less battles per day.

>>58477112>where do I start playing an RPG>let's find an pre-gen adventure for youWhy is this shit a thing? Are you so devoid of creativity that you cannot write your own adventure? Or are you going to trot out the "I work 60 hours a week and need to support my wife's son" excuse? And why do you need to houserule the game if it apparently works fine as is? Hell, the game even works without the MM3 math everyone fawns over, it's just a bit fucked which is fine who cares? >5e games generally start players at level 3That's so fucking retarded I have no words for it. Why even have levels 1-3 then? You level up so fucking fast anyway that it hardly matters.

>>58477112My two cents:Start at level 1. PCs at level 1 have plenty of new toys, and if you're coming from lighter systems, there's a lot of stuff to take in for new players. If anything, do level 1 by the book and then rush through the next few ones, but if you use the RAW XP rewards for stuff that's not combat, leveling up shouldn't take too long anyway.

Published modules are hit or miss, and since you can easily get all the stuff from the Leagues and so on, there's a ton of them. I usually run the Twisting Halls module from the Red Box DM's book, it feels a bit tutorial-ish nut it's got a good mix of encounters of different kinds, and it can help you as the DM gauge a few things.

>>58477169It's not "OSR stuff", it's perfectly valid reasons why Perception checks are a bad mechanic and you should feel bad for using them. It's in no way incompatible with 4e's combat rules which are half the reason people play the game. Just because it's "OSR stuff" doesn't mean it doesn't matter, by the way. Your entire system is spawned from those games by the way.

Because some people enjoy running pregen adventures? Other people like to use them initially, since if you're playing a new system for the first time it helps to have an example you can use to start with, before getting your eye in and being more able to go at it alone. This is especially true if you've never had a chance to play the system before and are running it for the first time.

For your latter point, that's just bizarre gibberish. Games can start at whatever level they like, there is no innate value in having a game start at level 1.

>>58477235>Why is this shit a thing?The only reason I asked about adventures is because I, personally, was unsure of the way that 4e worked beyond the fact that it focused on combat and didn't want to experiment when introducing my friends to the system as well. I am not a writer, nor am I someone who is going to understand something based on reading the material (which is why I ask questions ITT in the first place) so if there's something like the beginner's box that people had for 5e, or an adventure book that serves the same purpose, I'd rather use that until I'm comfortable with the way the game works, and I'm sure other new DM's feel the same way.>Why even have levels 1-3 then?So people have the option.

Tbh honest, I've been in enough PF threads to know a troll post when I see one. I'm replying to be polite but if you're going to be hostile then this will be the last (you)'ll hear from me.

>>58477298Except I do understand it. I understand it well enough to lay out reasons why it is bad. Unless you enjoy nonsensical results from your skill checks, or having to deal with the fact that they first came about as a limiting factor on tyrant DMs who ironically got an even better way to shit on players with Perception checks.

>>58477285>there is no innate value in having a game start at level 1.Why not start at level 30 then? There's no innate value to starting the game at any level. There's no innate value to advancement or the accomplishment of leveling a character, so why not start at max level?

>>58477112>is it possible to run a party from Level 1-30 without a whole lot of complications along the way?

Straight 1-30 is possible but starts slow. If you're working with other new players and want to open at level 1 so they have to make as few choices before the game starts as possible, I'd say to have them level up after each session until level 5 then take a more standard progression.

Best module source is probably http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com/, which has tons of free shit, but since it was written for drop-in play at shops & conventions their adventures are episodic. Not a major hurdle, especially if you're doing a quasi-sandbox where the stuff between linked adventures is character-driven, but can be confusing if you read one module then the sequel and wonder why it's set An Indeterminate Time In The Future.

>>58477350>I am not a writer, nor am I someone who is going to understand something based on reading the materialThen why are you choosing to DM? >So people have the option.Why does level 1 exist then? Why don't we go to level 0 or -1? It's an option to start at whatever level you want, after all? Why not have as many options as possible? Hmm it's almost like the game has a specific path it lays out for you to experience and by skipping that you're missing out part of what the game is structured around.

Because it depends on the premise of the game and the story you want to tell?

If you want to play a game about epic demigods from the get go, then sure, start at 30. If you want to play a game about absolute novice adventurers, start at level 1. And if you want to start somewhere else on the gradient, you choose a different level to start at. Is that so hard to understand?

>>58477385>things work the way they are meant to work in theory, in practice>if something is meant to work well in theory, it is a good mechanic>skill checks aren't just as dependent on a good DM to execute well, as a lack thereof, which is why skills were originally introduced>there is value to rolling a perception check to gloss over actually exploring the environment

I ran 3.5 for years, faggot. Trust me, I know how skill checks work. I know how skill checks are supposed to work, and I know how they are not supposed to work. I've seen as much if not more of the latter than the former, and seeing the general consensus on them has lent even more credence to my point that you people have become brainwashed by them into accepting nonsensical results that hurt the verisimilitude of your campaign.

So you're just incompetent and can't make proper use of skill systems? I'm sorry for that, but there's no need to lash out at other people because they're more capable than you are.

Skills are an excellent, effective tool to allow character differentiation, help players play characters with substantially different capabilities and to guide interaction with the world and story of a game. If you can't make them work, that's on you I'm afraid. Especially when 4e gives such excellent guidelines for them.

>>58477591No, no, please explain. How do you get from "skill checks" to "gloss over actually exploring"? And what do you mean with "actually exploring", assuming you're talking about actual games and not theories?

>>58477571>But that's not a problem of the rules, anon.It is when the rules are meant to replace player-GM interaction. Read this. It will explain the concept better than I can. You might even understand why older games had their perception rules set up the way that they did.>are you talking about how bad a GM you wereWhere do you get this from?

>>58477591I do know shit, and I am not being intentionally disingenuous. Clearly we have different ideas of what it means to explore the environment in an RPG.

>The GM describes the environment and asks for skill checks>Skill checks might reveal more information about the environment>Players use this information to take actions with the environment, that might yield automatic results or lead to more skill checks

Seems perfectly functional to me, and a basic thing you seem incapable of making work.

>>58477649I know the Old School Primer very well. It's not the bible, it's the manifesto of a playstyle that has nothing to do with the game we're talking in this general.Also, since you're grossly misrepresenting how skills work in 3e+ games (your words) AND you just said you've run 3.5 for years, the assumption is that it's you who didn't know how to run the game.

>>58477567>So you're just incompetent and can't make proper use of skill systems?I can. 95% of GMs cannot. And I only learned to do so after quite a bit of practice. Also, define competence in this context.> I'm sorry for that, but there's no need to lash out at other people because they're more capable than you are.Hilarious. You have no idea who you are talking to.>Skills are an excellent, effective tool to allow character differentiation, help players play characters with substantially different capabilitiesOh shit he has a +4 Perception and I have a +10. We're totally different characters!>to guide interaction with the world and story of a game.How does a skill check "guide interaction"? You mean by arbitrary results that usually have nothing to do with the situation?>If you can't make them work, that's on you I'm afraid. If you can't make FATAL or SenZarr work, that's on you I'm afraid.>Especially when 4e gives such excellent guidelines for them.I mean, I'm sure 4e gives great advice on how to use them. That doesn't mean the core idea of the mechanic is not still shit.

>>58477699>it's the manifesto of a playstyle that has nothing to do with the game we're talking in this general.It's a better playstyle than "roll a perception check to see what you find in this room so I can read out a description of it.">Also, since you're grossly misrepresenting how skills work in 3e+ games (your words)I am not misrepresenting anything about how skill checks in 3e, 4e, or 5e work. I know how to use them. Loads of other DMs don't. Also, since when and where you apply the chance roll that is a perception check, is entirely up to DM fiat, there really isn't much of a reason for it to exist, except for "I want there to be a chance you don't see this thing. " Which could be applied to anything.

Stop acting like I don't know how to run games just because I am complaining about a mechanic I think is shit. Just because I am capable of utilizing it doesn't mean that I don't think it's crap.

Also for the faggots talking about how it helps "differentiate" characters... do you require an intelligence check everytime you, the player, think of an intelligent solution to something?

Stories about groping around the sphere of annihilation are fun to read sometimes, but "you get an extra 10 GP because Melf rolled high" is actually the extent of the exploration mechanics most players want in their games. Looting the room is a perfunctory, dead trope and nobody enjoys playing it out.

>>58477701>The rules are there to guide and assist player/GM interaction.And they are completely unnecessary in many of the cases they are used in.Say you have characters on a ship and there is a tower on the horizon that they might see. Say you've detailed this location a small amount, but you aren't planning on "railroading" the players to it, you don't really care whether they go there. Now, by the rules, there's a Perception check required to spot that tower. Okay, either you have them roll Perception and when they fail you say "okay you don't see anything," or you roll secretly and arouse suspicion but if they all fail they still don't see anything, or you just tell them they see it because guess what they would probably see it no matter what the fucktarded rules say.

What is interesting about spotting the tower? The choice whether or not to go there. That is what is interesting. Not this Perception-roll paywall shit. The consequences to failing a perception roll are, most of the time, boring. A skill meant for spotting hidden stuff is often used by incompetent DMs (which is 90% of DMs) to get retarded results. What are the consequences to failing a surprise roll? You don't get surprise, which has immediate and tangible and interesting consequences.

>>58473935I've used the standard costs in my game and the players don't seem to be having problems.

I'm running the Orcus H1-E3 (we just started P1) series with the conversion modules and I use the loot tables in DMG 1 alongside what drops in the adventure and my party is pretty well off. Only rituals that are cast on a regular basis are Disenchant/Enchant Magic item/Comrade's Succor/Phantom Steed.

Although I would like to mention that I use a houserule where creating magic items and disenchanting magic items costs 1/2 to create and gets you 1/2 back on disenchanting instead of full price and 1/5 as stated in the original ritual. Mostly because I find it costs too much money and gives the party more freedom to craft some weird items.

>>58477792They aren't tastes. They are flat-out statements that you are yet to refute.

>>58477799>You have no idea how skill checks actually workOkay then explain how they work.

>>58477816>Or you pass the idea to a character with a better Int, so it'd make sense IC.So you're roleplaying another person's character? Also:>implying low intelligence people don't occasionally have good ideasI mean, the D&D design team came out with 5e, so there's proof of that right there.

So, if you maneuver your character in an intelligent way in combat, do you have to pass an Intelligence check for that as well? And in a mystery adventure, do you just have the wizard roll an Intelligence check? He's got 20 Int after all, he's probably smart enough to figure it out.

Idiot proofing just leads to dull shit. Fuck you and fuck that pointlessly reductive design philosophy. If you can't assume your GM and players are actually competent, most existing games just flat fail to work.

No? You've given a player an idea OOC that their PC is better equipped to come up with than yours. They can reinterpret how they came to it as part of roleplaying.

None of this needs a check, mind. It's just roleplaying your character. Since the stats you wrote down for them are a representation of the character you're playing, how they interact with things should be guided by those stats. If you gave them a low Int, they shouldn't come up with the genius plans. If you gave them a low Cha, you shouldn't be able to sweet talk your way out of trouble. If you try to do so, you're just a metagaming cunt and the system rightfully shuts you down when the GM asks for a roll.

In a mystery, if people are stuck and/or the guy playing a high Int character is struggling then, sure, ask for a roll. It help him roleplay his character, and you can use it to give him a hint and guide him along, keeping him engaged and enjoying the experience rather than feeling frustrated that he can't RP his character properly.

>>58477912>Idiot proofing just leads to dull shit.No, in the case of OSR it leads to people actually just doing shit and not having to roll dice to tie their fucking shoe (again, hyperbole, before you jump down my throat). And guess what? It works just as well if not better than the RPG where you have to roll a d20 to climb a fucking ladder or whatever.

>>58477935>You call for a skill check when there's an interesting consequence to success or failure.That's a completely vague and arbitrary statement. Especially as to what constitutes "interesting consequence." And guess what, a good majority of the skill check calls I see in adventure paths for all editions that have skill checks (3rd 4th and 5th) do not have "interesting consequences" to failing them.

>>58477912In my experience, the only truly idiot proof games are lightweight affairs with little to them. When you design a heavy game, you have to assume that the people playing it are semi-competent.

>>58476637My party just hit 11, but in heroic they were averaging 4-5 encounters a day, some days were 6, we once had 1 near the end of heroic where there was 9. They don't rest until they are all low on surges, not dailies.

>>58477974>In a mystery, if people are stuck and/or the guy playing a high Int character is struggling then, sure, ask for a roll. It help him roleplay his character, and you can use it to give him a hintOkay but shouldn't his wizard just be able to solve the mystery? He has a high Int after all. And if there's a puzzle in the dungeon, he should be able to just solve it with his high intelligence score.

>>58477982You're right OSR sama, we were so foolish to not want to play OSR, we'll go hop into the OSR thread and start trying to change those games to be more like the 4e we came here to discuss immediately.

>>58478003>and personally I find it boring as sin.Why is that?>OSR is a niche playstyle for a reason. That's because people play whatever the current edition is, or in the case of Pathfinder, play that.>>58478008Nothing about OSR gaming contradicts the playstyle of 4e.

>>58478022>someTry every single 5e adventure path wizards has put out. And again, "interesting consequences" is entirely vague and subject to interpretation. Again, vulnerable to bad DMing. Just as vulnerable as the OSR way which is actually interesting and requires actual interaction with the environment, instead of just "I roll to search the room" which is LITERALLY how the 4e rules describe you using it (pic related).

>>58477864See, the reason I'm looking for a houserule is that at this point the players have been hoarding basically all the treasure they've found over 3 levels, and they're only spending in rituals (which I like, because I think they add flavour even if they're not mechanically impactful), and I don't want them to discover in another level or two that they're broke. In other words, I don't want to use resources on flavour.

That, and I don't want the hassle of keeping a separate track of treasure to give out only for rituals.

>>58478053Blowing your daily load and using shift to get into flanking for combat advantage is not "tactics" anon. And when you can healing-surge yourself however many times a day instead of actually managing your HP as a resource, I fail to see the "strategic" skill required there. I'll give you the character building thing, though. But that doesn't mean a game couldn't have one and not the other.

>>58478074>In 4e, as a counterexample, the Game side is really fucking good.And that's the only part of it that is good. The combat. Well, it's good for a specific style of combat and it rapes believability in order to do so, but whatever. I'm not arguing for using OSR for everything. Only that the OSR style has a very strong argument here.

>>58478081>I don't want the hassle of keeping a separate track of treasure to give out only for rituals.In my game, I just gave 25% of liquid currency in ritual components/residuum. It's worked well for much of the game, so long as they didn't spam rituals nonstop, especially since residuum is weight effective and sells at 1 to 1.

>>58478090>nebulous bullshit of 'Player Skill'Except player skill is literally inescapable. Every time you take advantage of the "strategic and tactical depth" you are so proud of in 4e, you are using player skill over character skill. So it is there. You are a two-timing hypocrite who likes it when it benefits him and hates it when it doesn't. You're no better than anyone else.

>>58478121>Blowing your daily load and using shift to get into flanking for combat advantage is not "tactics" anon.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tactics Yes it is.

>And when you can healing-surge yourself however many times a day instead of actually managing your HP as a resource

Healing surges are a limited resource that put a ready constraint on the adventuring day that wont grind the game to a halt after a single fight. It fits the genre D&D is supposedly based on much better (OSR games are fucking awful for sword and sorcery).

>I fail to see the "strategic" skill required there.I'll give you the character building thing, though. But that doesn't mean a game couldn't have one and not the other.

The strategic element is in management of your dailies, healing surges and character building.

>>58477982>That's a completely vague and arbitrary statement.Does the consequences of failing the roll cause complications that would lead to a significant shift in the narrative being played out at the table?>If yes: Ask for a roll and play out the outcome.>If no: just let them perform the action w/o rolling.It's not rocket science here. If you're asking people to roll to climb a ladder, they have plenty of time to do so at a steady pace, and they aren't hampered by something that would impair their ability to climb the ladder, there's no reason why you would need to ask them to roll in the first place.

Otherwise, people would need one point in athletics just to walk down an even road without tripping over themselves.

...No? I'm specifically talking about when player skill acts at odds with characters kill, like people who insist on 'real roleplaying' rather than charisma skills.

Every 4e character is assumed to be a competent combatant, so the players tactical skill makes perfect sense. However, letting a player get their way through sweet talking despite having shit charisma, or solving every puzzle solo despite having shit Int, is metagame bullshit that should rightly be punished and not allowed by the system.

Why are you asking about what mechanics are 'necessary'? What aspects of roleplaying games are 'necessary' at all? It's about what's fun and creates a good gaming experience, and skill checks are a useful part of that, even if you're incompetent at using them.

>>58478198>(OSR games are fucking awful for sword and sorcery).You don't actually know what sword and sorcery is. Hint: it's not what 4e purports to be.>The strategic element is in management of your dailies, healing surges and character building.So, extra bloat that wouldn't be required if not for healing being incredibly easy to access. Got it. And no the game does not grind to a half after a single fight. They just don't to have the monster almost kill you in you one fight then heal back up then do it again, to make the combat challenging like they do in 3.5 or 4e where all the consequences of combat disappear within 1 minute of the encounter ending.

>>58478226>However, letting a player get their way through sweet talking despite having shit charismaLetting a player get their way because they have good Charisma but no leverage, is equally stupid. And if you think you aren't guilty of the Charisma Mind Control syndrome, I guarantee I could find several instances in your past where you went for it. Because people have on this blinder when they play RPGs like Charisma is some supernatural aura that makes people listen to you.

>>58478237It's not. If you look where the secret door is, you probably will find it. Disguising a secret door is more about being innocuous than actually hiding the seams. Have you ever seen actual secret doors? They usually aren't hard to find if you actually look at them. As opposed to level 1 rogues who have trained to find secret doors yet fail to find them 75% of the time.

I've read the entirety of the Conan stories, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and the Elric Saga. OSR games are TERRIBLE (emphasis required) at emulating any part of those stories.

>So, extra bloat that wouldn't be required if not for healing being incredibly easy to access.

Easy access to healing allows the game to go on longer.

>And no the game does not grind to a half after a single fight.

I've played plenty of OSR, yes it fucking does because players are often unwilling to go on when the spells are spent and hitpoints are missing.

>They just don't to have the monster almost kill you in you one fight then heal back up then do it again, to make the combat challenging like they do in 3.5 or 4e where all the consequences of combat disappear within 1 minute of the encounter ending.

The players at most levels are typically outlcassed by monsters (the fighter actually starts on roughly equal footing with most fodder monsters and is very much outnumbered usually) and there is no challenge to OSR combat because you have no tactical input besides rolling dice at things until they go away.

I must admit, it's a flavour of shitposting I'm less familiar with, so it's hard to discern which posts are pure bait and which posts merit a response. Even if I assume the latter is just 'none of them'.

>>58478251>and skill checks are a useful part of thatWhy are they useful? What use do they add? Besides trying to convince yourself that player and character are the same entity somehow.>even if you're incompetent at using them.I have no issue using them. I ignore them 90% of the time because they are almost entirely useless, but that's not my fault, it's their fault for not being a more compelling game mechanic.>I roll persuasion to ask around if anyone has heard of XOkay you hear Y rumor. Which is what happens when you ask people about shit.>I try to persuade X to help meOkay, you might be shit at roleplaying but you have a decent charisma so that makes up for that. Oh you want to roll instead? Okay despite that brilliant roleplay and your good charisma you got a 3 which means it's a 14 which isn't quite high enough so for some arbitrary reason he decides not to help you after all.

Skill checks add uncertainty out of combat, weighting your characters capabilities alongside random chance when the result of the check would be interesting, whether success or failure.

They can also be used to determine other factors of success, like how much you succeed in a case where it's guaranteed and the degree matters, or how long a task takes. It's a tool a GM can use to add tension, variation and an impact of player skill to the game.

And if you can't see the use of them then, no, I think you are just bad at using them.

>>58478383>OSR games are TERRIBLE (emphasis required) at emulating any part of those stories.How so?>Easy access to healing allows the game to go on longer.So do fights where the expected result is not the fighter ending up at 3 hp (or 0 hp with no consequences to suffering a mortal wound). Wow almost like damage matters more when it has consequences.>I've played plenty of OSR, yes it fucking does because players are often unwilling to go on when the spells are spent and hitpoints are missing.So they leave the dungeon and rest, or they press on. No different than 4e. I'm sorry if that means you don't get to fill the entire session with one combat after another, and each fight actually matters.>and there is no challenge to OSR combat because you have no tactical input besides rolling dice at things until they go away.That's only because you're retarded and can't think outside the box. I'll give you that one, though, even if powers are a gay-ass solution to the problem.

>>58478506>And if you can't see the use of them then, no, I think you are just bad at using them.I do see the use of them. In limited instances.>It's a tool a GM can use to add tension, variation and an impact of player skill to the game.How does rolling a die involve player skill? Are you talking about his skill at building his character to have high skill modifiers? A skill check adding tension is the only time it should be used anyway. And variation? How so.

>>58478306>>58478397>>58478508Honestly, let this thread hit bump limit and then discuss things in the next general. Even if we rerailed this thread, we'd only be able to have a solid conversation for about 50 posts before hit bump limit.

>>58478558>So do fights where the expected result is not the fighter ending up at 3 hp (or 0 hp with no consequences to suffering a mortal wound). Wow almost like damage matters more when it has consequences.

Dude, OD&D had to invent Clerics and Healing potions just so it can sidestep the whole low HP/months spent recovering after every cobat you take a hit as a fighter issue to begin with.

>>58478541I used to play 3.5 and I used to play 4e. I played a 4e campaign based on whatever Nentir Vale adventure has all the illusions and shit in it. I think the DM changed quite a bit of it though. We started doing keep on the shadowfell near the end of the campaign but with everything changed cause we were higher level. Then the campaign ended because the DM moved away and we were sick of 4e at that point anyway. In the middle I ran a short 4e campaign that was fun enough but really the game just felt boring. And I know, I know that's because I'm a bad DM. That's why my group tells me I am the best DM they've had out of the half-dozen they've gone through, and why I've never had people lose interest in any of my games, nor do I railroad nor do I do pointless sandbox shit, I have played in at least ten games and I have watched every single DM fail at some major aspect or another. But yes, 4e being a warm soup of barely-differentiated powers that deal shitloads of damage that just gets healed after every fight, that's all my fault.

>So do fights where the expected result is not the fighter ending up at 3 hp (or 0 hp with no consequences to suffering a mortal wound). Wow almost like damage matters more when it has consequences.

This statement is incoherent and doesn't have a salient point.

>So they leave the dungeon and rest, or they press on. No different than 4e. I'm sorry if that means you don't get to fill the entire session with one combat after another, and each fight actually matters.

I forgot the classic Conan story where he fought one dude and then didn't do anything for a week because he lost seven HP out of his 2nd level total of nine.

>That's only because you're retarded and can't think outside the box. I'll give you that one, though, even if powers are a gay-ass solution to the problem.

Thinking outside of the box is OSR code for giving the GM a verbal handie.

>That's why my group tells me I am the best DM they've had out of the half-dozen they've gone through, and why I've never had people lose interest in any of my games, nor do I railroad nor do I do pointless sandbox shit, I have played in at least ten games and I have watched every single DM fail at some major aspect or another.

>>58478687The purpose of 4e healing is replace wands of cure light wounds and structure healing to prevent characters just powering through the dungeon. Which I never understood because I never understood why resting every 5 seconds was such an important part of the game. But anyway, it was also to free up clerics to not deal with healing or some shit like that. The difference is that as D&D went on and damage bloat became a thing because bonus bloat became a thing and both hp bloat and damage bloat followed from that, the assumed combat structure became something like "party fights monster, monster really hurts fighter, party kills monster, party heals fighter, party continues forward." Obviously that's an oversimplification. As opposed to an OSR game where hit points were an actual resource, you didn't need healing surges to track because your hp was like your spells, when you were low on hp it was time to rest. Not low on healing surges or whatever the fuck. And because of chucklefucks who can't feel tension unless their fighter is getting brutally mutilated every combat, they kept this structure in, to the point where it almost feels like some pain porn shit to play D&D with the group getting slashed to pieces all the time because the damage output of monsters has become fucking insane just to continue challenging them.

>>58478700>fragileAt low levels yes>competentActually they are assumed to be more competent than a D&D character who needs to have a skill to be good at something.>This statement is incoherent and doesn't have a salient point.You don't get to decide that, nigger. Hit point loss has no consequence in 4e unless you drop to 0 and are left to fail all your death saves. Whereas in 1e or 2e it represents a decrease in your resource, which is hit points.>I forgot the classic Conan story where he fought one dude and then didn't do anything for a week because he lost seven HP out of his 2nd level total of nine.Wow it's almost like Conan isn't a 2nd level character. I don't remember him using any daily powers or healing surges, either.>Thinking outside of the box is OSR code for giving the GM a verbal handie.No it's not. Stop pretending you've played an OSR game you fucking faggot. What's next? "lol the way to win at OSR games is to bring snacks to the DM" why are you even fucking playing these games if you have such an adversarial view of things? You think you're any better off just because you can point to the DM and autistically screech "wahh that encounter was 2 levels too high for us! wahh!" No, he's still a dickhead, it doesn't change anything.

But searching the same area with dynamic variance of possible results is simulated by conditionals and attributes as defined by the rules and skill attribute adjustments and process.

This mechanic allows a party of multiple type class characters to generalize abilities and actions between PC and NPC and simulate the chances of actions like a video game but with no processor running results but rather a GM as that processor.

>>58478772>>58478830So a fighter at 3 hp hasn't even been hurt once? He only actually gets hit when he goes to 0 hp? Oh wait then how does poison work?Does using poison make you suddenly more accurate? That's weird.

>>58478795Yeah they are a resource you use up like you would use up hit points in a previous edition. It's just more damage, faster, so that you get close to 0 hp more often. Whereas in OSR taking damage is an actual problem, instead of the bloat of counting healing surges as well as hp.

>>58478668It always amuses me when morons use 4chan as a blogpost and forget what "anonymous" is supposed to represent.>Oh yeah, I totally fucked supermodels and flew to the moon. You just have to trust that I'm better than you even though it has nothing to do with the conversation.

>>58478835>But searching the same area with dynamic variance of possible results is simulated by conditionals and attributes as defined by the rules and skill attribute adjustments and process.What a load of wank just to say "I'm trying to simulate the real world even though that's not the point of an RPG.">reads the rest of your postOh wait you want a video game. Okay.

>>58478870Explain how poison works, then, faggot.If hp is just you getting "missed" or it's your combat skill or some shit, then how does you losing Strength from poison in 3.5 or taking poison damage in 5e, make any sense if the attack didn't actually hit you? Also why does dodging a greatsword tire you out faster than dodging a dagger? Shouldn't a dagger deal more damage, if that's what it's about?

>>58478885>constant ad hominem by butthurt autistics who can't understand their skill checks are shit>complains when I finally cave and respond to said ad hominem (which was utterly baseless anyway)There's nothing impressive about playing 4e anyway. What, you think I'm bragging?

>>58478907>But the real world is irrelevant, it's about telling a fun fantasy adventure story.Exactly. So who gives a fuck about skill checks.

>>58478899>It was actually to free up the party to have something more interesting than a Cleric.I literally just said that, here: >>58478770>it was also to free up clerics to not deal with healingIf you're not gonna read my posts, that's fine. But dont' reply to them claiming to say something that I didn't just say, when I did.

Poison works by the narrative structure for combats involving poison, in which you get nicked early in combat and then gradually weaken until the treacherous bastard [takes off your head/is defeated with a final surge of strength].

>>58478931First off, not the dude you were arguing with, let's get that out of the way right now. Moving on, with no way to verify whether you have actually done the things you've claimed, without taking into account that this is an anonymous imageboard where posts are considered falsehoods by default, it seems pretty stupid to bring up your personal history as if it has any merit to the topic at hand.

>>58478944I never denied this. Are you saying all hp loss is minor nicks and scratches? Or that some are actual misses? Because people have interpreted the vague-as-shit mishmash of what HP represents, in different ways. None of this has to do with my original point about hp loss actually mattering in OSR games, anyway.

No you said the opposite. You thought it was to make Clerics more powerful, it was to make divine magic unnecessary and let the party be led by something more interesting than Friar Tuck But With Magic For Some Reason.

>>58478973>Poison works by the narrative structure for combats involving poisonThat doesn't answer my question. Why does a fighter with 70 hp not get hit by a sword but gets hit by a poisoned dart because the dart poison cannot have any effect without actually hitting? And why, if the poison is part of the abstraction, is a poisoned dart harder to dodge than a regular one?

The more proof you show of not understanding how things work, the less and less of a point you can pretend to have.

Setting aside that HP loss matters in both systems, it's just how they weight the currency and the 'economy' surrounding it.

Different systems have different expectations about HP gain and loss. Oh no. What a shock.

4e's, meanwhile, also has the advantage that a fight can actually be dangerous without threatening to completely end the adventure. A few people going down would be the time to run for your lives in an OSR game. In a 4e game, it means you need to take some time to pick yourselves up and pull yourselves together before heading on, a bit more battered and exhausted.

The latter doing a better job of emulating most heroic fantasy fiction.

>>58478987>it seems pretty stupid to bring up your personal history as if it has any merit to the topic at hand.Good. Then stop bringing it up.

>>58478990>and allow for fun randomness in guiding the path of the story?>"lol I rolled a nat20 and convinced the guard captain to suck my dick">"oh no despite some really good RP and have a good charisma but despite it making total sense that this person would be convinced, I rolled a 2 and that's only a 14 so he doesn't want to listen to me after all. Oh well.... the dice say what the dice say, I guess...."

>>58479057>Setting aside that HP loss matters in both systemsIt only matters in 4e if you get to 0. In OSR it's a direct drain on your main resource. 4e gives you a secondary resource and bloats the rules just because the end result (running out of healing resources) is the same and the only difference is getting close to 0 hp more often. Does that add tension? Maybe.

>>58479031Well you won't say what you mean so I am forced to speculate. Maybe explain what the fuck you are talking about instead of making vague accusations? I know every single hp abstraction under the sun, retard. I've heard all of them. I don't know what particular theory you subscribe to when you refuse to say it or explain anything. Stop being coy and either explain yourself or fuck off.

>>58479060>Good. Then stop bringing it up.Since you can't read, let me highlight the part that makes you look dumber than you already are >>58478987>First off, not the dude you were arguing with>>58479060>"lol I rolled a nat20 and convinced the guard captain to suck my dick"Doesn't work that way because you can't crit on skill checks. Also, you'd probably be eating penalties if the DM didn't happen to make the guard captain interested in the proposal.

>>58479069>Because it's a convenient abstraction that does the jobBut it doesn't do the job. Why are my characters getting hit by poison darts but not regular arrows?

>>58479090So a goblin is a bigger threat than a level 20 paladin? Oh god this is like the "4fags try to justify AEDU being anything but narrative bullshit by making up post-hoc reason to explain once-per-day fighter powers" all over again. You post some dumb-shit attempt to rationalize something, and it gets BTFO with a dozen counterexamples because it's not internally consistent. This is fun!

>>58479115>Doesn't work that way because you can't crit on skill checks.No, but you can roll high on a persuasion check and succeed by RAW without leverage worth shit. And a high level cleric probably COULD, by RAW, convince a guard captain to suck his dick. And since nat1s are not an autofail on skill checks, he could also do this with 100% efficiency.

>>58479133The 4e system doesn't work any better. The only difference is in 4e you end up close to 0 hp more often. Which rapidly becomes boring, partly because the consequences of reaching 0 hp are boring. You roll some dice and three strikes you're out (or in, if you rolled well). Actually, I might be mixing parts of that up with how 5e does it, but I remember going down in 4e and it being pretty much pointless. Wow I got knocked out. Is this a boxing match with padded gloves? Going down has no consequences, because it can't, because it's false tension. If going to 0 hp was actually dangerous, then 4e would have to be structured differently to avoid being overly lethal.

It's all the same shit. 4e just does a better job at disguising it. For which is actually, unironically deserves some credit.

So you're just ignoring this part of my prior post then? I'll repost it, so you can't pretend it doesn't exist.

>4e's, meanwhile, also has the advantage that a fight can actually be dangerous without threatening to completely end the adventure. A few people going down would be the time to run for your lives in an OSR game. In a 4e game, it means you need to take some time to pick yourselves up and pull yourselves together before heading on, a bit more battered and exhausted.

Why are we doing this? It's been my experience that someone ragging on a system usually goes out of their way to make mountains out of molehills to disguise the fact that their central complaint is first and foremost that they don't like the game in question.

>>58479232Losing someone's contribution to the action economy is a serious blow to a team that can spell failure quite readily.

>>58479200Okay. I have a fighter with 20 AC and 100 hit points.An orc with +5 to hit shoots a crossbow dart at me. Okay he gets high enough to hit but since I have 100 hp he really only "hit" by hp abstraction rules. This continues. Only a few of these bolts actually "hit" me.

Now he equips poison darts and shoots at me. Every in-game hit is an actual hit, the dart actually punctures my flesh, because how else would the poison damage apply? This orc, who hit me with say 1 or 2 crossbow bolts before, now hits me with a full 30% of them. Hmm why is that I ask? Maybe because the hp abstraction is a lazy afterthought and the rules of the system don't take it into account at all.

>>58479207>Skill checks can only be made with the acknowledgement of the GM. The GM is also free to set the DC at whatever he goddamn likes.So, relatively speaking, the GM can just make the chance of success whatever he wants, completely arbitrarily. How is this different from OSR again?

Because the OSR is entirely arbitrary. Systems with actual useful rules give the GM guidelines necessary to make informed judgements rather than expecting him to make stuff up so the designers of the system can be lazy and not actually do any work.

>>58479180>No, but you can roll high on a persuasion check and succeed by RAW without leverage worth shit.If the DM allows you to make a proposal like that without heaping on penalties based on both how inappropriate it'd be and the guard captain's own feelings on the matter, that's the DM's fault, not any inherent flaws in the skill system in and of itself.>And a high level cleric probably COULD, by RAW, convince a guard captain to suck his dick. How?>And since nat1s are not an autofail on skill checks, he could also do this with 100% efficiency.Unless the DM has the guard captain refuse because CHA skills are not mind control effects that the guard captain has to accept.

>>58479327>Because the OSR is entirely arbitrary.No, it's based on common sense. Which is what the skill check rules assume the GM has anyway. So it comes to the same thing.> the designers of the system can be lazy and not actually do any work.So you want them to write as long and dense a rulebook as possible to not appear "lazy"?

>>58479442>"he confused one word therefore he's illiterate LOL"Most poisoned crossbows are hand crossbows and I have seen them described as firing "darts" rather than "bolts" in the past, since they are smaller. That is why I used that word instead. Are you happy now? Or are you gonna call me a moron again based on irrelevant bullshit?

>>58479416>So the DM has to do arbitrary shit to prevent something unlikely from happening.More like, the DM doesn't have to take it on the chin if the player is trying to disrupt the game to either be "funny" or to prove a point that nobody made in order to win an argument that nobody wants to participate in in the first place.>Hmm seems like common sense wins again. Why not just use that instead?Because if people like you had common sense we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. So until common sense actually becomes common, it helps to have rules that determine the logistics of things.

>>58479589>Having skills isn't objectively worse, either.It is when they lead to nonsensical results which they commonly do even when used by RAW. They also slow down the game. So, why SHOULD I use them?

Skills can be nice to have because they provide an impartial mediation device, provide an objective measure of a character's capabilities, and in my experience as a GM, take work off my shoulders by not requiring me to yea or nay every single thing the characters do.

i love using terrain in 4e. once i used a hulk-type creature to clamber up a ship, its weight causing it to turn just enough for some of the seawater to seep in, then when the giant jumped onto the boat, splash water started filling the boat. difficult terrain for everyone as water flooded the deck.